"What a marvellous player Janet Hilton is!"

Contents

• Biography and Performance Profile
• Critical Notices
• Teaching and Education Profile
• Discography
• New Releases
• Contact Information

Clarinettist Janet Hilton enjoys worldwide recognition through her extensive series of recordings for Chandos, ASV, EMI, BBC Classics, Clarinet Classics and Naxos and appearances in many countries. She is best known as a soloist and in chamber music but her diverse career has encompassed orchestral playing and teaching.

Throughout her career her exceptional musicianship and the eloquence of her playing have constantly been reflected in reviews at home and abroad. The Financial Times praised “the rare lightness and grace” of her playing and “the rapt eloquence of her phrasing, shaped with the quiet freedom of a great singer.” The New York Times ascribed to her “the kind of musical power that supersedes mere nervous energy.” For the Guardian it was as “a soloist who has no inhibitions about communicating with her audience eloquently and directly in her own persona” that her performance was exceptional and Michael Kennedy, in the Sunday Telegraph, wrote of a “perfect a blend of emotion and technique” in a performance of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet.

Born in Liverpool Janet won a scholarship at the age of 15 to the Royal Manchester  (now Royal Northern) College of Music , where she studied clarinet and singing.  Another scholarship took her to Vienna for postgraduate study.

First prize in a national competition for artists at the beginning of their careers led to her BBC debut in the Mozart Clarinet Concerto and many more broadcasts, solo and chamber concerts throughout Britain. Building her career from this start, she has played throughout Britain at festivals including Edinburgh, Cheltenham, Aldeburgh, City of London and the BBC Proms, where she premiered the Clarinet Concerto by John McCabe. Her career-long partnership with the Lindsay String Quartet until their retirement included recordings of the quintets by Mozart, Weber, Brahms and Bliss. Other chamber music partners have been the Pauk, Kirshbaum, Frankl Trio, Steven Isserlis and Nobuko Imai. Her duo partnership with pianist Sarah Beth Briggs now extends to two trios, Clarion 3 with bassoonist Lawrence Perkins and the Stadler Trio with violist Robin Ireland. 

A distinguished teacher, Janet has taught at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the Royal Northern College of Music, the Birmingham Conservatoire  and, from 1998 Royal College of Music London where she was Head of Woodwind and director of the wind ensemble for ten years and still continues to teach.

"Rare lightness and grace, shaped with the quiet freedom of a great singer."
FINANCIAL TIMES

"A warm richness of tone, a felicity of phrasing, a rhythmic vivacity such as would not readily be surpassed by any other clarinettist."  
THE HERALD, GLASGOW

"What a marvellous player Janet Hilton is."  
HI-FI NEWS AND RECORD REVIEW

"It was the sort of playing that makes you want to get up and dance." THE GUARDIAN

"So perfect a blend of emotion and experience that she inspired her colleagues to a performance of quite unusual musical intensity and pathos ..."
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

• 1998 - 2009:
  Head of Woodwind, Royal College of Music, London

• 1993 - 1998:
  Head of Woodwind, Birmingham Conservatoire

• Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester
• Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow
• Royal College of Music, London

• Royal Northern College of Music
• Trinity College of Music, London
• Conservatoire National de Musique et de Danse, Paris
• University of Bristol
• University of Illinois, USA
• University of Central Michigan, USA
• Notre Dame University, USA
• Cleveland Institute, USA (video masterclass)
• University of Indiana, Bloomington
• Singapore Conservatoire
• Chethams School of Music
• Wells Cathedral School

• BBC Young Musician of the Year
• National Federation of Music Societies Young Artists Award
• Geoffrey Hawkes Clarinet Prize, Royal Academy of Music
• Lombard and Ulster Music Foundation
• Audi Young Musician
• Music for Youth
• Concerto Internazionale di Musica di Duino, Italy
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Young Musician, Canada
• Royal Overseas League Competition
• Maisie Lewis Young Artists Award